“This must bring back fond memories for you,” Paxton said. He looked over at her, his brow raised. “Seeing the football players in all their glory,” she clarified. “As I recall, you experienced a fair amount of acclaim back in those days.”
“You sound jealous,” he said in a teasing tone.
“I am not.” She huffed with exaggerated affront, relieved to see them return to a bit of the good-natured banter they’d found over the past week. Paxton shrugged. “Besides, this was never my thing.”
Sawyer turned to her. “Why is that?” he asked.
Paxton was caught off guard by the genuine curiosity coming through his steady gaze. “It...it just wasn’t,” she replied.
“Is it because you were too cool to be bothered with all this silly homecoming stuff, or was there something else?”
“It just wasn’t my thing,” she repeated. “I never understood the hero worship when it came to football players. Everyone treated them like they were gods. It just made me less interested.”
“Because if the rest of the crowd found something interesting, you thought it should be ridiculed. That’s how you used to look at things back then, right?”
“Not everything,” she said, her eyes still focused on the parade gliding down Main Street. “Just football players.”
Several heartbeats passed before he said, “Maybe you should have given the football players a chance back in high school.”
Paxton whipped her head around to look at him. She didn’t know what to do with the unrestricted honesty staring back at her.
She wanted to ask him what he meant, but he had already returned his attention to the parade. She stood there with her eyes on the trucks that continued to slowly roll along the roadway, but her mind remained on Sawyer’s words.
It almost sounded as if he’d had a thing for her back in high school. It was ridiculous to even think that. It may have been twenty years ago, but Paxton could remember those days all too well. Sawyer Robertson hardly noticed her back then. In a school with a little more than three hundred students, in a town that was small enough that everyone knew everyone, she still had never been on his radar.
The whirling sirens of the Gauthier Volunteer Fire Department’s red fire engine, also decked out in green-and-white crepe paper, brought her back to the here and now.
As the crowd dispersed, she and Sawyer returned to the conference room. Paxton had already told him that she would leave a bit early today to help Belinda prepare for the grand opening of the River Road Bar and Grille, but there were a couple of things that she needed to finish before she could call it quits for the day.
If only she could concentrate on her work.
She fought the urge to bring up their conversation during the parade. Had he meant that she should have given all football players a chance back in high school, in the general sense? Or did he mean one player in particular?
“Shouldn’t you be heading out soon?”
Paxton jumped, even though he’d spoken in a normal tone. She looked at the time on her laptop.
“Yeah,” she said before putting the machine in sleep mode. “I need to stop in at Shayla’s. She has some special grand opening cookies she made for tonight. Not your typical bar fare, but I didn’t want to hurt her feelings.”
He walked over to her and assumed his favorite position, his arms crossed while he perched on the edge of the larger table.
“Do you all have everything in place for tonight?” he asked.
She nodded, unable to keep the excited smile from creasing her lips. “We’re as ready as we can get. Just have to hope people show up.”
“They will.”
She slipped her laptop inside her briefcase and snapped it closed.
“Paxton?” She looked up at him. “Just because I haven’t brought it up again, don’t think you’re getting away without explaining why you think the night we spent together was a mistake.” He pushed away from the table and sauntered to her, his relaxed, languid stride in direct opposition to the intensity in his eyes. “And don’t think for a minute that you’re going to get away with that sorry-ass excuse you tried to feed me earlier today.”
He stopped inches away from her. “You still think about that night. I know you do, Pax. And I’m going to make you admit it.”
She managed to take a much-needed breath as she crossed her arms over her chest and stared him down. “Is that a challenge?” she asked.
A smile curved up the corner of Sawyer’s mouth. “That’s not a challenge, sweetheart. That’s a promise.”
* * *
Paxton entered the Jazzy Bean and, spotting Shayla at the register, walked over to the counter, folded her arms on top of it and dropped her head onto them.
“Let me take a wild guess,” Shayla said. “Bad day?”
Paxton’s response was a low growl. She lifted her head just enough to peer up at her friend. “You haven’t applied for a liquor license, have you?”
“Ah, no,” Shayla answered with a laugh. “The best I can do is an iced tea, and not the Long Island kind.”
“That’ll do,” Paxton said. “But hit me with some real sugar instead of the artificial stuff. I deserve it after the day I’ve had. Are the cookies ready?” Paxton asked.
“They’re in the back,” Shayla said as she filled a clear plastic cup with ice and dispensed raspberry tea over it. “They are so adorable, if I do say so myself. They’re shaped like fleur-de-lis, with Saints scrolled across them in gold icing. They’re going to be a hit tonight.” She handed Paxton her iced tea. “But you can’t get the cookies until you tell me about your crappy day. You owe me the story behind that arctic air you and Sawyer brought in here at lunchtime.”
Shayla walked over to the small rectangular window that led to the kitchen. “Lucinda,” she called to her cook. “I’m going to take twenty minutes.”
She and Paxton walked outside to the same table she and Sawyer had occupied earlier.
“I can’t stay long,” Paxton warned.
“I know,” Shayla said. “You need to help Belinda get ready for tonight. I’m sorry I won’t be able to make it. I promised Leslie I’d watch the girls. She and Gabriel have tickets for the game.”
Kristi and Cassidy Kirkland were Shayla’s young nieces—her deceased brother’s two adorable children. It was the intention of helping her sister-in-law raise the girls after her younger brother’s untimely death that had initially brought Shayla back to Gauthier. Even though her sister-in-law had remarried, Shayla still played a huge part in the girls’ lives.
“I’m hoping I’m too busy waiting on customers tonight to notice your absence,” Paxton told her.
“You will be. Gauthier takes care of its own. The folks here are going to support your mom.” Shayla reached over and grabbed the iced tea she’d poured for Paxton, taking a sip before setting it back on the table. “Now, what has you craving liquor in the afternoon?”
Paxton tipped her head back and released an aggravated sigh.
“A number of things, but this flood protection project tops the list,” she lied. Straightening in her seat, she braced her hands on the table. “I prepared myself for mishaps. Everyone knows that it’s foolish to go into a job thinking that it will all go as planned, but I hadn’t expected such a huge setback so soon.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Sawyer brought up a potential problem with the topography maps this morning, and I think maybe he’s right. If he is, it will throw everything completely off track.”
“Is this what you two were arguing about earlier?”
“Which time?” Paxton snorted.
“Pax,” Shayla said, admonishment coloring her tone. “Please don’t tell me you’ve been Mean Paxton the entire time you and Sawyer have been working together.”
“Excuse me, but who is Mean Paxton?”
“Oh, please. Give that innocent act a rest, girl. I know you. I’ll bet you spent all of last week giving Sawyer a hard time, and for no good reason.”
“I have not. We’ve gotten along just fine so far. He’s stayed out of my hair and I’ve stayed out of his. Until today, that is. And I do not have a mean side,” Paxton argued.
“You most certainly do have a mean side,” Shayla said. “And I don’t like the thought of you and Sawyer just ‘getting along.’ I was hoping there would be some sparks between you two. The good kind of sparks.”
Paxton’s head reared back. “Sparks?”
“Yes, sparks. You know, those tingly little bursts of magical feelings that happen when two people realize they would be perfect together?”
Paxton could not stop her jaw from dropping as she stared at her best friend.
She and Shayla had been inseparable since the third grade, when they had bumped into each other in the cafeteria and spilled spaghetti sauce all over their clothes—on school picture day of all days. Instead of getting in a fight, which the classmates who had crowded around them immediately started to chant in favor of, she and Shayla had both laughed at each other. They’d instantly recognized that they were kindred souls.
Throughout their years of schooling and in all the years beyond, Shayla was the first person Paxton called whenever she had news to share, a problem to solve or just time to kill.
But she had never told her best friend about the one-night stand she’d had with Sawyer. In fact, she’d never told Shayla about her true feelings for Sawyer, stretching back to their years in high school. She didn’t want to put Shayla in the position of telling her that he was out of her league. Paxton had known that all along.
Yet it suddenly seemed as if Shayla didn’t feel that way at all.
“Why would you think there would be magical sparks between me and Sawyer?” Paxton asked her. “I’ve barely said two words to him since high school,” she lied. “In fact, Sawyer and I have never had much to say to each other. I wasn’t even on his radar before we started working on this project.”
Shayla looked at her as if she were a foreign object underneath a microscope. “Wait—are you seriously still in the dark about this?”
“About what?” she asked, reaching for her iced tea.
“Oh, come on, Pax.” Shayla groaned. “Seriously? You cannot be this blind. Sawyer has had a thing for you since high school.”
“What!” Paxton screeched.
“Just stop it,” Shayla said. “I refuse to believe you are this freaking blind.”
“You’re insane.”
“Really? Don’t you remember how he used to come over to the animal shelter all the time?”
“He used to come there because you were tutoring him.”
“The boy was half-crazy over you, Pax! Think about it,” Shayla continued. “Sawyer graduated fifth in our class. He had more academic scholarships than football scholarships. Do you really think he hung around the animal shelter because he needed tutoring?”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Paxton said as she took a sip of tea. Sure, they’d slept together as adults, but there was no way Sawyer Robertson had any kind of thing for her back in high school.
Maybe you should have given the football players a chance...
Paxton sat up straight. “Wait a minute.”
“You catching a clue?” Shayla asked.
She had never considered the fact that Sawyer was indeed an excellent student. He was a jock. Jocks were dumb—at least that’s what she told herself in those days.
“The entire time he was being ‘tutored,’” Shayla said, using air quotes, “he would steal looks at you. He even asked me if you had a date for prom, but you’d already told me that you weren’t planning on going.”
“Prom?” Paxton asked, her mind still reeling from the thought of Sawyer coming to the animal shelter where she and Shayla volunteered as teens to see her.
She had been so sure that no one would ask her to the prom—or, even worse, that someone would ask her as a joke or a stupid juvenile bet—that she had declared early on that she would not participate in the silly time-honored tradition. Instead of going to the prom with her classmates, she’d spent that Saturday night as she’d spent most of her Saturday nights back then, hauling ice, slicing lemons and washing glasses at Harlon’s. And thinking about all the fun she was missing out on.
Was it possible that she could have spent that night with Sawyer?
Shayla reached across the table and covered her hand. “Do yourself a favor and lock Mean Paxton in the basement for a while. Sawyer is a good guy. You should give him a chance.”
Paxton gave her a subtle nod, but she didn’t say anything else. Apparently, that was enough for Shayla. She dropped the subject of Sawyer and switched to the lineup of events she had planned for the Jazzy Bean’s Friday Night Jazz Night.
As her best friend rattled on, Paxton’s mind remained on their previous conversation. That Sawyer felt a certain attraction toward her now was undeniable. She’d managed to convince herself that it was purely physical and based solely on his drunken memories of the few naked hours they’d spent together. But if there was some truth to what she’d gleaned today—first from Sawyer and now from Shayla—there was a possibility that the boy she’d longed for for more than twenty years had felt the same way about her.
It was too unbelievable for Paxton to comprehend.
She made a show of checking the time on her phone and said, “I’m sorry to drink your tea and run. But I need to get to Landreaux.”
“And I need to finish up here so I can pick up Kristi and Cassidy,” Shayla said as they rose from the table. She pointed a finger at her. “And I’m serious when it comes to Sawyer.”
Apparently, the subject had not been forgotten.
“I know you are,” Paxton replied. “But it’s a moot point until this project is done. I don’t mix business with pleasure.”
“That’s a bald-faced lie. What about that coworker in Little Rock?”
“Believe me, he doesn’t count,” Paxton said. “You want to help me bring the cookies to my car?”
Shayla followed her into the coffee shop, and together they gathered the bakery boxes filled with sugar cookies to Paxton’s car. She opened the rear gate with the remote on her key ring, and they positioned the boxes around the extra suitcases that were still in the back of her SUV.
“You look as if you’re living out of your car,” Shayla commented.
“Because there’s no room at Belinda’s. Can you believe she turned my old room into a sewing room? She left the daybed, but everything else? Gone.”
“I didn’t know she sewed.”
“She doesn’t, but Judy Monroe was selling all of her sewing supplies. Belinda has never been able to back away from a deal.”
“That is hilarious,” Shayla said with a laugh. “You know if you’re ever at the office late and don’t want to drive all the way home you can stay in our guest room.”
Paxton held up a hand. “No, thank you. I have no interest in hearing that honeymoon bed knocking against the wall.”
“We’re past the headboard-banging stage,” Shayla said. She tipped her head to the side. “Actually, thinking about last night—”
“Bye.” Paxton closed the gate and rounded the back of the SUV.
“Oh, do you want to meet before the game on Friday?” Shayla asked. “We can go together.”
“Um, do you remember me ever going to a game back when we actually were in high school?” Paxton asked as she climbed behind the wheel. “Why would I want to go to one now?”
“It’s homecoming. You can make an exception this time. And its not as if you’ve never gone to a Lions footbal
l game.”
Paxton gave her some serious side-eye.
“Okay, you went to a game,” Shayla said. “But you had fun that night, remember?”
“I fell on my ass while walking up the bleachers, and later that night Scotty Mitchell spilled his beer all over my favorite shirt. I spent the majority of my adolescence working in a bar, but it wasn’t until that night that Belinda asked if I’d been drinking.”
“Well, Scotty doesn’t drink anymore,” Shayla said. “Carmen made him give it up after he had that kidney stone.”
Paxton’s face scrunched up. “Ugh, are we really that old? People we went to high school with are developing kidney stones?”
“I know, right?” Her eyes turned pleading. “Would you at least consider coming to the game on Friday? It’ll be fun.”
“All depends on your definition of fun,” Paxton said. “Thanks for the tea. I’m assuming it was on the house since you didn’t ring me up.”
“You have a tab which must be paid in full at the end of the month. Unless you move back to Gauthier permanently. Do that, and I’ll give you all the free tea you want.”
“Nice try.” Paxton laughed, waving from behind the wheel as Shayla went back into the coffee shop.
As she was preparing to back out onto Main Street, she looked into her rearview mirror and noticed Sawyer’s car still parked in front of the law office. Her breath hitched, and that annoying little flutter she got in her stomach whenever he was around came to life.
Was Shayla telling the whole story when it came to Sawyer’s feelings about her back when they were in high school, or was it her friend’s starry-eyed newlywed optimism rewriting history? Paxton didn’t think she could be so blind as to not recognize that the guy she’d wanted for so long had actually been interested in her.
“Who are you kidding?” she said aloud.
Even if she’d had the barest inkling that Sawyer had had feelings for her back then, she doubted she would have been open-minded enough to accept them.
Stay with Me Forever Page 7
